Morning Read: SAC Capital’s Savior: Auto-Deleted Emails?

By Brendan Conway

Market check: Index futures are slightly higher, crude oil nears $98 per barrel and the U.S. Dollar Index, reflecting the greenback’s value versus a basket of major foreign currencies, is down slightly.

Fund watch: Bloomberg’s Greg Farrell has the scoop on a potential roadblock in the biggest SEC insider-trading investigation in history: Auto-deleted emails. SAC Capital automatically deleted emails every 30 or 60 days until the fall of 2008, including “during the period of time at the heart of the probe, July 2008,” Farrell reports, citing an SAC official. An anonymous source said that most of the emails relevant to the probe were from that period.

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As exchange-traded funds and other investing vehicles have ballooned in number, the task of figuring out what works well and what doesn’t has only gotten harder. Barrons.com’s Focus on Funds looks under the hood of ETFs, mutual funds and hedge funds for overlooked values, actionable ideas and the latest pitfalls for fund investors.

Chris Dieterich has covered the U.S. stock market for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a graduate of Regis University and the Missouri School of Journalism.